Rand Paul rips Fauci’s coronavirus response, says schools should be reopened
Bob Fredericks
June 30, 2020
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday ripped into Dr. Anthony Fauci and what he called government “central planners” during a hearing on COVID-19 response, asserting that Americans should not be “sheep” — and that US schools should reopen.
“It is a fatal conceit to believe any one person or small group of people has the knowledge necessary to direct an economy or dictate public health behavior. I think government experts need to show caution in their prognostications,” Paul, a Republican and libertarian, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing featuring the Trump administration’s top coronavirus experts.
“It’s important to realize that if society meekly submits to an expert and that expert is wrong, a great deal of harm may occur when we allow one man’s policy or one group of small men and women to be foisted on an entire nation,” Paul continued.
“Take for example government experts who continue to call for schools and day care to stay closed or that recommend restrictions that make it impossible for a school to function. There are examples from all across the United States and around the world that show that young children rarely spread the virus,” he asserted, pointing to countries that have reopened, including Denmark, France and Germany.
“No spike when schools are opened. Central planners have enough knowledge somehow to tell a nation of some 330 million people what they can and can’t do,” he said.
“We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what’s best for everyone. Only decentralized power and decision-making based on millions of individualized situations can arrive at what risk and behaviors each individual will choose. That’s what America was founded on, not a herd with Washington telling us what to do and like sheep we blindly follow.”
He then slammed Fauci, accusing the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and White House task force member of being a know-it-all.
“Dr. Fauci, every day we seem to hear from you things we can’t do. But when you’re asked, ‘Can we go back to school?’? I don’t hear much certitude at all. ‘Well, maybe.’ ‘It depends.’ Guess what? It’s rare for kids to transmit this. I don’t hear that coming from you. . . .
